Information Resources

August 2, 2015 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Tennessee courts and laws are shielding the activities of child welfare workers from public view in a case that fairly screams ‘negligence’ on their part. We see this regularly of course and I’ve commented on it many times. Almost invariably, what child welfare authorities do or don’t do in individual cases remains unknown to the press and the public due to laws requiring confidentiality. But in this case as in so many others, what’s being protected is the malfeasance of CPS workers and others, not the best interests of children (Memphis Commercial Appeal, 7/31/15).

July 31, 2015 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Like a bad penny...

No sooner had I reported on a terrible article about at bad study of Australian men and women and their attitudes toward work and family than this article turns up about the same subject, but based on different studies (New York Times, 7/30/15). Fortunately, the Times piece is better than the one on Yahoo I posted about yesterday, but that’s not setting the bar any too high. Like the Yahoo article, Claire Cain Miller’s one in the Times fails to grasp the most basic ideas about how people solve the work/family conundrum.

July 30, 2015
By Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

National Parents Organization had a huge win this year in Utah. The Beehive State passed the most far-reaching shared parenting bill ever in the United States save possibly for Arizona’s. That law encourages judges to order a minimum of 145 days parenting time — 40% — for each parent post-divorce.

Too many children of divorced parents are currently harmed by the existing divorce laws. The current laws are heavily biased, in words and in practice, toward assigning custody to only ONE of the parents. The other parent is left with little to no parenting time at all and yet they are burdened with the obligation to pay excessive and disproportionate amount of child support. These parents are often forced by the court to enter a spiral of bankruptcy and jail time. The victims of these outdated and harmful divorce laws are the CHILDREN who lost the support of one of their loving parents. While divorce laws are mostly state matters, the President has the bully pulpit that he can use to bring this into national highlight and I am pleading with him to help right this wrong.

July 30, 2015
By Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

When we’re not arm-twisting in the halls of state legislatures, NPO is hard about the task of spreading the word about the need for shared parenting. To that end, NPO’s Robert Franklin was honored to appear on WCHE, 1520 AM in Philadelphia this past Monday. Here’s a link to the audio.